New Owner, New CEO: QBurst Preps For AppDev Growth

‘While the underlying talent is great—I mean, I've met a lot of engineers and developers here, a lot of leaders who know their stuff, know their business, and who know the technology underpinnings of how to create solutions—QBurst is not well known in the market. It is still small. There was under-investment on the front end, which means we didn’t do as much client relationship building or front-end go-to-market as some other companies might do. So it remains undiscovered in the marketplace,” says QBurst CEO Arun Kumar “Rak” Ramchandran.

QBurst, a 20-year-old technology services provider specializing in application development and front-end engineering for clients including clothing retailers, luxury brands, and healthcare companies, has gone through a couple of major changes in the last couple months.

First, the company in February received an investment of over $200 million from Multiples Alternate Asset Management, giving the India-based private equity firm a controlling stake in Chantilly, Va.-based QBurst.

Then, in April, QBurst got a new CEO in Arun Kumar Ramchandran. “Rak,” as he’s more well known, recently sat down with CRN to talk about the company and his plans to grow its business.

Priority number one, Ramchandran (pictured) said, is to just get the word out about the capabilities customers can expect from QBurst, which he described as a “hidden gem.”

“While the underlying talent is great—I mean, I've met a lot of engineers and developers here, a lot of leaders who know their stuff, know their business, and who know the technology underpinnings of how to create solutions—QBurst is not well known in the market,” he said. “It is still small. There was under-investment on the front end, which means we didn’t do as much client relationship building or front-end go-to-market as some other companies might do. So it remains undiscovered in the marketplace.”

Other than getting the word out about QBurst, Ramchandran said his company is quickly stepping up its investment in AI.

“Going forward, we want to step up our investment in working with hyperscaler ecosystems including Azure and AWS, which are two of our areas of strength, as well as a little bit of GCP (Google Cloud Platform) as well,” he said. “We are looking at how to fine tune some of the AI capabilities, and help clients integrate their own LLMs to essentially create more agentic workflows using their LLM investments.”

There’s a lot going on as QBurst looks to make its mark on the U.S. application development space. To learn more, read CRN’s full conversation with Ramchandran, which has been lightly edited for clarity.

What is QBurst? How do you describe the company?

It's a hidden gem.

You need to be more specific.

I've been part of the process since Multiples started looking at QBurst and then decided to acquire it. It piqued my interest too, because I believe it is a very well-run company. It has been around for 20 years. The founders created it with a lot of care. They were very technology-oriented people, but also very customer-friendly. When they built this company, I think there was a lot of passion for building stuff, building features, building products which customers can use. And I see that engineering ethos that pervades the company through the senior leadership and the engineers right now.

I say it's a hidden gem because, while the underlying talent is great—I mean, I've met a lot of engineers and developers here, a lot of leaders who know their stuff, know their business, and who know the technology underpinnings of how to create solutions—it’s not well known in the market. It is still small. There was under-investment on the front end, which means we didn’t do as much client relationship building or front-end go-to-market as some other companies might do. So it remains undiscovered in the marketplace. A lot of analysts don't know about it. I think there is a lot of hidden potential here, but the underlying platform, the underlying services, are top notch.

What exactly does QBurst do?

In one sentence, it is an application development software engineering company. It builds stuff. It is different from others in that a majority of our client work and case studies are on our customers’ front end: business revenue generating platforms, e-commerce websites, loyalty management, mobile apps, and designing product specifications for things used in hardware or data center cooling systems or compressor environments. Things which are not necessarily back end, although there is some stuff we do on the back end, but the majority of our work and differentiation comes from working on the front end of our customers’ business: high-impact revenue generating stuff, mission critical applications, and in some cases leveraging software engineering strengths.

Cooling systems and compressors?

One of the companies that we work with builds cooling systems and compressors for data centers. It's a private company, but it's growing fast, and we work on the products’ features, specifications, and defect analysis. We’re using IoT and AI. The customer is growing very well because data centers are all the rage right now. They provide cooling systems and compressor systems for these data centers.

QBurst was just acquired. Talk about that.

Three months ago by Multiples Alternate Asset Management. Multiples, a private equity asset management company, invested over $200 million to get a majority stake in this company. So yeah, very recent.

The founders stepped back, and I stepped in as CEO. I've already got a person who's going to lead our growth and strategy, like a Chief Strategy Officer, for North America. The rest of the management remains the same right now. I will work on augmenting it with some more senior leaders in the near future, but no other management changes for now.

Is QBurst a profitable company?

Yes, a well-run, profitable and growing company.

Is QBurst headquartered in the U.S. or India?

Our corporate headquarters is in Chantilly, Virginia. The majority of the folks who work at QBurst are in a state called Kerala, in the south of India. That's where the company originally started from.

What type of customers does QBurst work with?

One of the largest clothing retailers, which is pretty much the rage with young people, you'll probably figure it out when I say this. It is Japan-headquartered with a global presence, and it's one of the most desirable brands for young people and even middle-aged people. We worked on their e-commerce websites and have migrated their platform to 35 countries and made it customizable using micro services architecture. They are one of our largest customers. We also work with some luxury brands, again, some very well-known names from France. We are doing loyalty management and subscription-based services for them using a platform called ‘line.’ We also work with a large discount grocery retailer in the U.S. which has 400 stores and $15 billion revenue, and we are working on a lot of customer-facing applications and integrating their portals to ERP systems, including store checkout and pricing and so on. We also work with a large healthcare company associated with a leading university in New York. We work with a large telecom company in the advertising and marketing area. Those are a few which come to mind.

You didn’t come out of Multiples. What did you do before QBurst?

I have 25 years in the technology services industry, with 11 years at Infosys, six years at Capgemini, and eight years at my last company, Hexaware Technologies. Hexaware was owned by [New York-based global investment firm] Carlyle, and it just went public in India. It's a $1.5-billion revenue company and I led one of their largest and fastest growing business units: high tech and professional services. In the last two to three years, I led its GenAI unit, which is essentially all the go-to-market consulting and solution offerings in GenAI that we took to market. And that's one of the key motivations that brought me to QBurst. The kinds of services we deliver at QBurst, a lot of them can and will leverage AI to some extent, and I think we can do much better in taking it to market using AI-driven platforms.

What kinds of investment does QBurst want to make in terms of AI?

We already have a few accelerators. We use AI for a lot of our testing services. We are using AI for some accelerators like development. Some of our developers use AI tools. Going forward, we want to step up our investment in working with hyperscaler ecosystems including [Microsoft] Azure and AWS, which are two of our areas of strength, as well as a little bit of GCP (Google Cloud Platform) as well. We are looking at how to fine tune some of the AI capabilities and help clients integrate their own LLMs to essentially create more agentic workflows using their LLM investments.

Does QBurst expect to make any acquisitions?

We are certainly looking at augmenting our current capabilities. There are a few areas where we are strong in: retail, realty and property management, AdTech and FinTech, and healthcare. But there are certain domains where we don't have a very strong presence, and we'll look at maybe complementing them. On the services side, we have a great presence in engineering, but we may need to beef it up a little bit more on the data and cloud side. So we are looking at that. In terms of geography, we have a big Japanese presence, which is a pretty strong differentiator. The U.S. is also a strong, big market, but we want to grow bigger in the U.S. So we will look to start adding more U.S.-based revenue or portfolios. …

Our majority investor, Multiples, has been in the enterprise technology space and made some well-timed bets in the U.S. market. This includes Quantiphi, which is a well-known entity in the Google ecosystem. Multiples is going to use QBurst as a platform for future acquisitions to bolt on. I would just like to bring up the role of Multiples in having the vision to create and to bring me in to lead this and take it forward. Multiples sees QBurst as a platform for adding a larger set of technology services to the QBurst platform.

What are your strategic priorities for the rest of 2025?

One, we want to invest more on our front end. Sales and marketing is critical. We are under-invested in that. Two, we want to align our service delivery models to be more in tune with client expectations. There is some stuff we can do better there. This company has grown over time in a founder-led environment. I think there are some service delivery alternatives that we haven't explored: outcome-based, output-based, some commercial models which can be more aligned to customer expectations.

Ultimately, what we want to do this year is make AI mainstream in how we deliver our services. This is already being done in some projects. Certain teams are leveraging it better, but it's not uniform. Ultimately, the goal for us, the vision that I have, is to have QBurst be seen as defining the future of technology services delivery. The reason I feel we can do that is, as I mentioned, we are not that well known, so we have a chance to paint on a blank canvas. We have the necessary capabilities. We are not afraid of cannibalizing our own revenues, because we are not that big. We are actually going to be eating competitors’ lunches by leveraging AI. Our focus is to invest in the front end, align our service delivery model, make AI the mainstream for service delivery, and make sure that we define the future – which is AI-driven.

You said that QBurst was under-invested on the front end? How so?

It's interesting how the company has grown. It grew a lot based on references from the good work the teams have done. Some customers go from one place to the other. Word spreads around. There are inbound inquiries. Obviously, the founders managed some of that interface and they had a few people who managed some of these customers. A lot of these customers are managed by remote teams and delivery leaders, which is great for making sure what is being delivered is of good quality. And some customers have told me that what they like about QBurst is that it's not a ‘salesy’ company. That’s great to hear, right? I mean, we have some underlying good strengths. So my focus is not to make it ‘salesy,’ because that would go against the culture, but to create a sales orientation which is slightly different, with a little bit more focus on consulting-lead, high-touch, understanding customers’ problems, which may not necessarily be the services they are currently buying from us. There might be other solutions we can deliver and have that as our front end. That's really what I mean. Investing in our local presence would also increase our footprint in the U.S.

By the way, did you say the word ‘salesy?’

We don't want to be salesy. We want to be consulting-oriented.

Are you hiring?

Yes, both in the U.S. and in other geographies. We will increase our footprint in the U.S. Clearly, this is an important area for us to invest in.